Tycho’s brass nose

Tycho Brahe with a silver plate on his nose

As a 20-year-old medical student at the University of Rostock, the famous 16th-century astronomer Tycho Brahe attended an engagement party, where he got into a fight with a fellow student. Weeks later, the two rivals ran into each other again. The row reignited and blew up into a sword fight, in which Brahe suffered a cut to his nose. The wound was so serious that he had to have a brass plate to cover the missing bit. His brass nose was so famous that it ended up on his headstone.